


we daren't go a-hunting/for fear of little men

by twofoldAxiom



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fae, Alternate Universe - Human, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - No Game, Alternate Universe - Police, Alternate Universe - Urban Fantasy, Changelings, Fae & Fairies, Faeries Made Them Do It, Humanstuck, Mind Control, Multi, Nightmares, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Partial Mind Control, Racism, Sexism, weed references
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-24
Updated: 2019-06-29
Packaged: 2019-11-29 01:32:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,215
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18216413
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twofoldAxiom/pseuds/twofoldAxiom
Summary: Feferi Peixes is a police officer tangled up in things she shouldn't be, Karkat Vantas is a lost changeling steadily trying to get more lost, and Eridan Ampora is a faerie archduke looking for a measure of trouble in the mortal world.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Honestly I just wrote this because I needed a break from the other stuff so don't expect it to update regularly or even expect it to update, especially with Camp NaNo around the corner lol.
> 
> Will still try to of course, but this is my attempt at writing new characters for the most part.
> 
> Title from "The Fairies" by William Allingham.

Nightmares again, but you're fairly used to that. 

This time it's about the last scene you've had to clean up. Bloodied fingers clutch at the edge of your uniform as a bullet-riddled corpse drags her way up your legs, and it's not that you don't want to help the poor thing, and it's not like you're too scared to move, it's really just that you're so damn _sad_.

You look into her milky eyes and feel your heart shatter into a million sharp-edged pieces. You can't really see the details, but you know her, somehow, as you do in dreams; the dead girl's face as it must have been in life, and she's begging you to tell her why this had to happen, why you weren't there.

Your name is Feferi Peixes and you have a lot of these nightmares in your line of work.

At least it isn't so hard to wake up.

~!~

That case had been maybe, well, three months ago? It even got solved. You shouldn't be so upset about it.

Not much actually happens while you're around. Most of what you do is tell off speeding teenagers, tell old people about busted taillights (and get negged by old white men), and try to ignore your co-workers saying shit behind your back.

The nightmares are a lot more frequent, though. You like to say you've mostly learned to deal with them. You wouldn't say you deal _well_ , because you're putting on a jacket and fishing around in the dark for your keys, but you deal as best you can. That's all the world can really ask of you, thank you very much, and that's all you're going to give it on this front.

You do your job and you try to help people, and if you have mixed success on any of that, it's...

It wasn't acceptable when you were thirteen but you know what, it's been ten years. You're a police officer dealing with nightmares at twenty-three, and you haven't saved the world or run for office, but you're doing better than you thought you would at eighteen, even if it's not what thirteen hoped for.

You swear as you drop your keys and pat around on the carpet. You're a mess; you haven't put on any makeup or brushed your hair, but a three in the morning trip to the nearest seven-eleven isn't going to need you looking bright eyes and bushy tail anyway. You mentally scowl at the very thought, locking the door behind you.

~!~

The nearest seven-eleven is a few minutes away from the apartment building, and you don't want to be out long, just long enough to get your mind off things and restock the fridge. You drive in silence, if the growl (hah) of a Triumph Tiger is silence; you yourself can't really hear it with your helmet on anyway. The fact that this is as common a thing for you as it is should probably be troubling, but some masochistic part of you enjoys the ritual of waking up once a week and getting on a motorbike in the middle of the night, probably.

When you get to the seven-eleven, it's not there.

Or, well, the _building_  is there, but the seven-eleven is pretty much gone. The glass windows are dusty and marked with tape, and the interior is gutted and lightless. There's a notice on the door that tells you it's going to be replaced with a Starbucks for some reason, which wouldn't be so bad if it were any other time for you to discover this. 

You sigh heavily and resolve to get some donuts instead; there's a Dunkin' Donuts open around here somewhere, you're sure, and maybe something sweet and a hot chocolate will get your mind off things better than getting potato chips and soda and going home. You can sit at a booth and nurse it like some of your coworkers prefer to nurse alcohol, except without the shitty club music and shittier pickup lines.

Thus bolstered by the thought of sweets, you turn around and promptly bump right into someone you didn't even hear coming. Your first thought is a mugger, your second thought is something worse, but they go down like a sack of bricks when you jab them in the gut and they don't try to get back up even when you've got a leg slung over your bike already.

You glance at them as you rev the engine and get ready to leave, just in case, but they just... lie there, staring up at the moon.

Reasonably enough, your next thought is that they're probably high or drunk and you should do something about that. You got into this job because you wanted to help people. Sometimes that means you direct a confused pothead towards donuts, though you'll be damned if they expect you to pay for any.

Also they might be seriously hurt. They don't _look_  seriously hurt, but lying there can't be comfortable.

You don't switch off the engine, but you wheel a little closer and take a look at their face from where you're seated. He- you think they're a he, you're not going to judge if you get corrected- stares past you, but not so much because he can't see you and more in that way that feels like he just doesn't want to look at you.

Is it just the lighting, or are his eyes actually red? You don't mean pothead bloodshot, either. They could be brown, of course; you tell yourself they must be, but the impression sticks with you like a false awakening, that his irises look almost like pools of blood.

He suddenly focuses on you.

"Come back to finish the job?" He drawls, sadly. His eyes, thank God, leave yours, but go back to staring up at the sky. "Or you could go, that works too. I'm having a bit of an existential crisis and getting punched in the gut probably did more to put the dissociation at ease than any of the medication has, so I can appreciate that, thank you."

"Um." That doesn't sound very convincing. You try something else. "I wanted to apologize about that, actually. Do you need help?"

"Not the kind anyone here can give, unfortunately." He _laughs_ , the corners of his eyes crinkled with it and his mouth turned up in something almost a snarl, and gestures for you to move out of the way so he can sit up and dust himself off. His teeth are unnaturally sharp, and almost too white, too large for sure. You don't point that out. You definitely don't stare.

But you don't leave either, not when he's standing, and you still don't leave when he looks you up and down once, quickly, and frowns. You get ready for something backhandedly insulting, maybe "you'd be prettier if you lost some weight" or something stupid like that. You make a move to put on your helmet.

"You're a cop, right?"

A chill goes up your spine and you look at him. Is he suicidal? About to attack you? Is he high after all? Your brow furrows and you slowly put the helmet down again. He doesn't look like he's asking you to kill him or like you're about to get attacked for real, but that's a pretty delicate question. "Why do you ask?"

He sniffs, hard; you almost think he's crying but then he spits off to the side and it's just a glob of some foul-looking phlegm. "Didn't know where to start, and I guess I'm being stereotypical. I'm not sure exactly how true this is lately, but anyway, where's the police station?"

Concern mode immediately switches from "this person is potentially dangerous" to "this person needs my help". You put on your best Serious But Helpful Officer expression (you've had a lot of practice), and square your shoulders slightly. "I can give you directions just fine, but I'll need to know- broad terms if you have to, but I need to _know-_  what you need to do there."

At the very least, Sollux is always there around this hour, so you're not sending this guy to deal with the night shift guys and potentially any trouble they could cause him without someone to (hopefully, if it's a good night) back him up. Sollux is your friend, after all, and probably the only officer there more likely to actually hear him out than throw him in the holding cell besides you.

He shrugs. "I would really like to not sleep on a park bench, if it's all the same to you, and I'm not exactly homeless so I'm just going to be there until morning. I'll figure out what to do by then, I'm sure."

Oh. You make a sympathetic noise in the back of your throat.

But that's the end of that, isn't it? He might be fine with asking invasive questions like "are you a cop", but you're not about to ask if he's being abused or if he's just lost his keys or anything like that. That's his business, unless he makes it your business; and if you would really like to make it your business and help him, well, you've learned that sometimes you just can't when you're not in uniform, or you'd never get anything done.

You give him directions to the station, which he writes down on the back of his hand and down most of his wrist with a marker he produces out of practically nowhere. It's like a magic trick; no pen, and then he has a pen.

You nod as he finishes up, and put your helmet on and finally head to that Dunkin' Donuts. You order two raspberry jellies and a cup of hot chocolate, and you wonder if he'll be there when you get to the station later in the morning when the sun is out, while you wash down sticky fruit preserve with slightly bland chocolate.

Well, you got your mind off your nightmare but now you've got this to think about. He could've gotten an AirBnB room, or gone to a motel, or Hell, crashed at a friend's place. Why would he want to sleep in a police station? It's not exactly _comfortable,_ and hardly what you'd call _safe_.

You get home without further incident and get ready to try and sleep for another two hours. Sugar, at least, gives you weird dreams instead of sad ones.

~!~

Your name is Karkat Vantas and you're surrounded by iron. 

It's not actually entirely iron you think, some kind of cheaper alloy like everything is lately, but it's physically cold to the touch, more than it has any right to be, and that has to count for something, right? That has to have some effect, right?

The officers looked at you funny when you asked them to lock you up for the night. For your own protection, you said, and a couple of them laughed nervously, one of them told you to go the fuck home, and another pat you down to make sure you weren't carrying anything dangerous or illicit or whatever it is humans give a fuck about.

You sighed and let him do so, muttering to yourself about getting this over with. You'd expected something like this, and when he finds the sachet of grass clippings and mint tea in your back pocket, he doesn't even sniff it to make sure it's what it looks like.

At least it's only at night that you need to be in here, anyway, so hopefully they let you out by morning. They'll definitely find out what it is by morning, and hopefully you're not brown enough to get in _more_  trouble for something like that. (You fully expect them to interrogate you, but at this hour, nobody wants to so much as look at you. You count yourself lucky that your little stunt didn't get you worse than just being put behind bars.)

The cot is thin and uncomfortable, but when you lie down to sleep, you're more relaxed than you have been all week.

You wake up an hour later to the sound of hissing metal, the smell of burning flesh. Archduke Eridan Ampora himself, skin like blistering porcelain where his hands grip the bars, stands in front of your cell.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Three months later is still better than my usual "schedule" lol.

It's been three days since you'd taken that stranger to your station and apparently you're crazy for thinking that happened, because the day immediately after, when you'd asked your co-workers about him, all they did was give you funny looks.

It's no secret that Feferi Peixes is a little weird in the head. A little too empathetic, they say, for this line of work; bound to get a little fucked by it, especially after the last case with the dead girl that haunts your nightmares. Aradia suggested you take up a hobby. Sollux suggested medication.

When you ask about the stranger, describe him even, you get funny looks and concerned suggestions about your sleep schedule, and nothing more. You check the cameras yourself and he's not there, either. Maybe he didn't show up?

But now it's been three days and you're off work for a bit, so you're in your new favorite Krispy Kreme ordering a red velvet donut when you spot someone familiar in the reflection of the display glass. 

You're not one to panic over meeting someone twice, and he's not even looking at you; it would be easy to mind your own business, get your food, and leave. You are, however, entirely too curious about why he disappeared before getting any help; what his story is, why he was out that night, if there's anything you can do to 

( _save him_ )

help. You ache at the thought of not being able to help, in whatever way you can.

He sits down at a booth with a tatty notebook and a glittery gel pen, which is cute and reminds you a little of highschool, but does make for a pretty incongruous image. But you're not one to judge someone's taste in writing implements, right? It's just a pen, and you don't want to make assumptions.

You order an extra donut, sugar-dusted, and sit down across from him; not too quietly, but not so loudly that it's obvious you're trying to get his attention. It gets his attention when you slide the donut across to him, though, and he looks up from where he's been muttering to himself and marking things off a list. He snaps the notebook shut before you can take a closer look and looks up at you, and you note, in the glare of the overhead lights, that his eyes are red.

Not bloodshot but, literally, the irises are bright, poppy-petal red.

"Can I help you, officer?"

He actually sounds more tired than he did the night you met him. He cradles his chin in one hand, the gel pen hanging loosely from his fingers, his overall posture floppy and apathetic. His eyes are the only bright thing in him, like this.

You smile at him in a way you hope comes off as friendly and welcoming, nudging the little saucer with the donut on it a little closer towards him. "I just noticed you were here and decided to stop by and keep you company."

"We don't know each other well enough to have that obligation." He says. He eyes the donut, though. "We met once, three nights ago, and I took a nap in a cell and then left by morning. Before you even showed up."

"That you did." You examine your own donut for a little before taking a nibble, making sure to wipe off any stray crumbs and frosting that clings to your lips. You take a sip of chocolate. "Or at least you said you did. I'm kind of wondering if you actually went at all, you know."

"Why?" He snaps. His eyes flicker with something hard to place- defiance, or anger, or despair. "Is it illegal to change my mind now?"

You gulp. "No, just- you were in a bad way when I saw you, yeah? And I know you don't have much reason to like me after I-"

"Socked me in the gut, don't forget that." He flips the pen in his fingers, loops it around his fore and middle fingers like a baton. How does he do that? Is he a street magician? "Go on, I'm wondering where you're going with this now."

You frown.

"I'm a cop and all, but I'm off duty right now, so you don't have to be so defensive." You say, this time meeting his gaze head on. "I just want to help you; if there's anything I can do to help you, and I'm willing to do a lot of things, then..."

You trail off. He grumbles something inaudible and reaches over with his free hand, picks up the donut you'd offered him and sniffs it like he might be sniffing for poison or something of the like. When he takes a bite, it's like his jaw unhinges a little; slightly wider than a human's mouth should be, especially with how his mouth looked about normal sized a second ago. The veins under the skin on the back of his hand look starkly blue even through the brown.

"Didn't I tell you last time that there's nothing you could do to fucking help me?" He says. He doesn't sound so angry this time. Tired, almost plaintive, though you're not sure if he's begging you to understand or something else. He wipes sugar off his mouth on the back of his sleeve. "Why do you want to help, anyway? You have some kind of savior complex going on?"

That probably wouldn't sting so much if it wasn't true. You go quiet as he searches your face, but you don't look away. He sighs, letting the quiet between you and the sounds of other people in the Krispy Kreme drown out the remnants of the sound. You take a glance over to his notebook, and the pen he's still twirling in his fingers. He follows your gaze.

"I'm not showing you what's inside." He says, taking another bite. You shake your head.

"I wasn't going to ask about it. But I still want to know why you changed your mind on going into the station."

"I didn't."

You pause. "What?"

"I said I didn't change my mind. I was in there. But I don't think you'd believe me if I told you why nobody remembered me." Well that's a fast way to make you suspicious.

"How did you know I was going to ask you about that?" You do your best to sound casual when you ask, but you get the feeling you've failed pretty miserably at that already when he narrows his eyes at you. You chuckle, not nervously, but you're definitely on edge now. "Or I guess I should ask if I was making it obvious."

"It was all over your face like acne at a dermatologist's office. But I promise you I was there, and the reason nobody remembers I was there is because, as it turns out, a little iron is _not_  going to ward off a fae Archduke that really wants to find you." You would ask what that means, but something about the look on _his_  face tells you you'll find out anyway if you make sure not to. He rolls his tongue in his mouth like he's tasting whatever he's going to say next.

"I don't... really want to go over that part, but suffice to say he outranks me in a lot more than title and he made sure nobody remembered I was there. At that point, there was no use staying the rest of the night." He hunches his head into his shoulders, crossing his arms like a crab tucking its claws under the top bit of its shell. "So I followed him out and left, and now I'm in more trouble than I was before."

He gestures around the Krispy Kreme.

"Consider this my treat to myself before I'm hunted down by the High King of Faerie himself come sundown. Hence why I would really appreciate if you fucked off and I got to plan my last hours in peace."

That... sounds entirely too despairing and serious for him to actually be kidding, but also too stupid to be anything but. He looks at you like he really does expect you to just get up and leave, though, which you don't want to admit is why you're staying put, but really, is why you're staying put. You cross your arms in turn.

"That sounds an awful lot like this High King fellow should be answering to the law, if you're in that kind of trouble. If you can give me an idea of who this guy is..."

He balks, and for the first time this afternoon, the look on his face is legitimately terrified. "I can't give you his name, what are you, crazy? That'll just help him find me sooner. I want to enjoy my last few hours unmolested, you know."

You stare.

And then you decide you've had enough, squaring your shoulders and speaking to him with a fire you didn't know you had.

"If you're afraid you're going to die, you don't have to accept it!" You hiss. "This isn't- this isn't some horrible Feudal thing where you have to die just because someone calling himself High King says so! We have laws, and people who can protect you, and I'm willing to help you find the resources to do so, especially if this guy is doing whatever horrible things that might have led to this point!"

Your tone softens, because he flinches away from you, and you really didn't want that to be the effect had here. It's not right that he's afraid of you, and it's not right that he's so _afraid_. You want to reach across the table and hold his hand, but even you would think that's too much. "It's not just for your sake. This High King person sounds dangerous, if you're talking like you're just going to up and die. What have you been doing the past three days? We can help you with that, while we get some people to look into your situation. Maybe we could even find somewhere better for you to hide."

For a moment he looks... not quite sad, but definitely like he might cry and he's holding it back. This is turning sour fast.

But then he speaks up again, glaring at you.

"If you want to help me so much, tell me _your_ name." He says, hesitant, but at least it's something. You smile. If this is what gives him hope, if this is a step towards clearing up whatever it is happening with this High King or whatever, then that's good, right?

"Feferi Peixes." You say. "But you can just call me Feferi, that's fine by me. I don't have much attachment to Peixes. If we're going to introduce ourselves to each other, you are...?"

He mutters to himself quietly enough that you can't hear. You can see the shape of your name on his lips, but you don't think he's actually saying it. He looks up, and picks up his notebook again, standing up and finishing off the last of his donut.  


"You can call me Kar." He says. "So... if you're going to help me, there's only a couple things I can think of that you can do. And I guess I'm just going to apologize in advance and for being a dick earlier, yeah?"

"You're unnecessarily ominous." You say, brightly. "So. What is it?"

" _Feferi Peixes_." There's something behind the way he says your name. Tingles run across your scalp, electrify your limbs. You stare, and you're not sure what you're seeing- afterimages, haloes. His face looks wrong, slightly blurred, inhuman points and shapes in the arrangement of a face, like the illusions on butterfly wings. He licks his lips and gulps. "If you would grant me sanctuary as a guest in your domain, I would be grateful."

"Uh..." You blink away whatever you just saw. He's still standing in front of you, nothing's changed. His eyes are still that weird red, his face completely normal. Nothing glows but the overhead lights and the sun outside. You shrug. "I mean. I don't know about my actual apartment or anything, but I can set you up somewhere-"

You remember the way he said your name, and it tugs on something in the back of your mind.

"-in the guest rooms." What? You shake your head. That's not safe; you practically just met Kar here, if you don't count three nights ago.

"Thank you." He says. You're a little disquieted by that, but... he looks genuinely relieved, like he wasn't actually sure what you would say. You finish your drink and realize you've only nibbled your donut, and excuse yourself to get a refill, feeling vaguely like something is wrong all the while.

You glance over your shoulder once you get your drink and he's already gone.

Shit.


End file.
